Breaking Down Barriers : mRelief Checks Food Stamp Eligibility via Twilio SMS

Breaking Down Barriers : mRelief Checks Food Stamp Eligibility via Twilio SMS

The City of Chicago offers food stamps for those who need them. But, getting to the government office responsible for granting you eligibility can mean three bus trips and taking a half day off work. When you add in a few hours long wait to see if you’re eligible, just reaching out for help can seem like a burden.

A large number of people who need food stamps can’t surmount the logistical barrier to get food stamps. mRelief is fighting to change that. Instead of traveling across town and waiting in lines to see if you’re eligible for help, you can just reach in your pocket and text a Twilio-powered number.

Genevieve Nielsen, CTO of mRelief believes in the power of text messages as a tool for social change. It’s not SMS as a medium that makes mRelief so powerful, it’s the ubiquity of text messaging in the demographic mRelief serves.

“People who have been through the experience know how stressful and taxing it can be,” says Genevieve.  “I think text messaging can be a really powerful tool to have a strong social impact.”

Getting public assistance doesn’t come with an “on-demand” option. Over ten thousand people in Chicago apply for rental assistance, but just a few hundred get accepted. mRelief is working with the City of Chicago to change those statistics, by opening up a new avenue Chicagoans can use to check their public assistance eligibility on demand via SMS.

Now mRelief users just text a Twilio-powered number, answer a few questions, and they’ll know if they’re eligible for food stamps. If they’re eligible, mRelief refers them to the nearest non-profit based on their provided zip code.

When they launched in November, mRelief received over 10,000 applications in just two weeks. The message was clear: this is something people not only want, it’s something they need. “It’s been tremendous to see the response,” says Genevieve.

Now mRelief is working on raising awareness of their service outside Chicago and across greater Illinois. 54% of Illinois’ population don’t use smartphones, which makes using an app or web form pretty tricky. SMS is the great equalizer, the lowest common denominator in this case.

Genevieve knows the mRelief team cleared a tremendous hurdle by offering Illinois residents SMS-powered eligibility checks. But there are so many more people who don’t know about mRelief.

For the people who have stood in line and poured over pages and pages of government forms, help can seem hard to get. mRelief’s next challenge isn’t creating a viable way to get assistance, it’s convincing those people that it’s only one text away.

mRelief is operated with the help of the City of Chicago and Smart Chicago Collaborative .